dhatcher1
04-24-2006, 10:31 PM
Your group is following the green arrow to complete a quest. You now see some red dots at the edge of your compass. As you approach you a LOT of red dots. What do you do now?
This thread will be for explanation and discussion of the tactics your group can use to defeat the many groups of bad guys you encounter in the game. It is somewhat focused on the Warriors role, as that is how I learned these things while bringing Thud up to the maxed out level he is now.
First I am going to tell you what I see happen 90% of the time (2 things A or B)…
A> ATTACK: The warriors charge in and attack the closest bad guys. In doing so they bring their aggro circles over one monster from every group in the area so everything attacks the party. As a benefit they absorb the brunt of the bad guys initial onslaught, but generally get really hurt in the process. In order to keep them alive, the healers rush up to heal them, they keep the warriors up but this leaves the healers in the front lines of the swarm of hostiles so they become totally defensive, running around to get away from fighters and dodging arrows and spells. They can get trapped and beat to a pulp rapidly. Also that leaves your ranged artillery units (elementalists and rangers) far enough away they can only reach the hostile warriors (who are desgined to absorb damage). This leaves you and the bad guys in almost identical tactical positions so only if you are more powerful in numbers or levels will you consistently win. Once you reach the level cap of 20 and are adventuring in areas where the hostiles are all levels 22-28 this tactic will only lead to many deaths, ressurections and failed missions. This is the only tactic henchman warriors are really capable of.
B> KILL HEALERS: The slightly wiser warriors know if you have to take out the healers, then necro MMs that you have a much better chance of defeating an opponent. If they have no healers or minion summoners and you do, the battle is all but over. So they will use the ctrl key to find a high value target and charge through the enemy front line to attack the healers or necros. While this strategy is more effective than strategy A, it still has the problems of the warriors aggroing everything in the area and the healers are left precariously alone in the middle desperately trying to stay alive and heal at the same time. And you wonder why it is so hard to find a human monk to adventure with. Just this weekend a warrior did this and then had the gall to comment to my wife (who was playing a monk) “all you had to do was keep me healed.” Try playing a monk up at the mid levels and see how you like it. It is a thankless but crucial job. You can get the hench warriors to act like this if you have one of your ranged attackers declare a high value target (use ctrl-space). The henchmen are very good about massing firepower on your called target.
The bad guys travel in groups of one to as many as half a dozen. As you adventure in a region, if you pay attention, you will learn to distinguish the normal groupings –even when they intersect with other groups. Some groups are totally static and will not move unless attacked; some are area defenders and will roam around in a small area; finally there are patrols that roam over a broad area. It often pays to watch what the enemy is doing for a while before attacking, but be wary of patrols coming in on your sides or behind. Sometimes if you just wait a patrol will leave and you wont have to fight them at all. If the number of enemy looks daunting, there are probably multiple groups and if you watch a while you can figure out what they are. Then you can use strategy C to draw one group at a time.
C> DRAW THEM TO YOU: A much safer strategy when there are multiple groups in the area is to have one person move forward and bring a single red dot inside their aggro ring. This will trigger that enemy and his entire group to attack. You then move back and draw them toward the rest of your party. This method has the advantage of being able to pull groups apart so you can face one at a time and finish the enemy off a few bad guys at a time.
Up until recently I have been using a combination of strategy B and C. It is fine with the henchman healers I had been adventuring with. They will blindly charge up and keep you healed without complaint. When I started going with human monks, my attitude changed. One commented to me … “Thud, you are a pain to keep alive.” I quickly retorted “Alesia never complained.” I then did some research and testing for better methods to attack and found out something that all warriors need to get through their heads. WARRIORS ARE NOT THE PRIMARY DAMAGE DEALERS. All you warriors out there may be shocked to find that out, but it is true. Here are more advanced strategies that work well and can be combined with strategy C to greatly improve your survival rate in higher level adventuring areas. I got these from reading how the Underworld and Sorrows Furnace teams operate and testing in Grenth’s Footprint (outside Deldrimor Warcamp.)
D> DEFENSIVE WARRIOR: A ranger or elementalist will declare the target and all ranged personnel will concentrate on that one target until it goes down. The warrior has a different duty, he protects the ranged personnel. The warrior gets between the incoming fighters/trolls/mintaurs and attacks them before they get to the healers and nukers. If the bad guy runs by at attacks the healers anyway, you stick to them and finish them off. Note that this keeps you near the healers and give the healers a better change of not being a target. Once the fighters are gone, then you can go forward to finish off the hapless enemy elementalists and rangers that might be left. The big advantages of this method are you minimize the aggro possibilities and keep the healers safe. You just have to let go of the desire to be the primary killer and trust that your ranged team is going to pick good targets and concentrate firepower. It is impossible to do this with henchman warriors.
E> STANCE TANK: This technique works extremely well in areas with an aggro trigger like a torch or blasting barrel. Holding these items will guarantee that almost all the bad guys will attack YOU. The book for the bonus in Nolani Academy mission is the same. You will really want a BONDER monk with you to keep the stance tank alive. As the stance tank you take defensive stance skills like wary stance, balanced stance and Bonetti’s defense. You stay in those stances to minimize the damage the enemy will be pouring on you. The bonder will be striping hexes off you and keeping life bond on you to take some of your damage also. That leaves area attackers like barrage archers, elementalists and SS necros to damage the enemies clustered around you all at once. Your only job is to stay up and hold that item while they destroy your ill focused adversaries. I even talked to a couple guys who won PvP matches using this technique. The enemy team all logged off after failing to take down the tank after ten minutes of pounding him.
This thread will be for explanation and discussion of the tactics your group can use to defeat the many groups of bad guys you encounter in the game. It is somewhat focused on the Warriors role, as that is how I learned these things while bringing Thud up to the maxed out level he is now.
First I am going to tell you what I see happen 90% of the time (2 things A or B)…
A> ATTACK: The warriors charge in and attack the closest bad guys. In doing so they bring their aggro circles over one monster from every group in the area so everything attacks the party. As a benefit they absorb the brunt of the bad guys initial onslaught, but generally get really hurt in the process. In order to keep them alive, the healers rush up to heal them, they keep the warriors up but this leaves the healers in the front lines of the swarm of hostiles so they become totally defensive, running around to get away from fighters and dodging arrows and spells. They can get trapped and beat to a pulp rapidly. Also that leaves your ranged artillery units (elementalists and rangers) far enough away they can only reach the hostile warriors (who are desgined to absorb damage). This leaves you and the bad guys in almost identical tactical positions so only if you are more powerful in numbers or levels will you consistently win. Once you reach the level cap of 20 and are adventuring in areas where the hostiles are all levels 22-28 this tactic will only lead to many deaths, ressurections and failed missions. This is the only tactic henchman warriors are really capable of.
B> KILL HEALERS: The slightly wiser warriors know if you have to take out the healers, then necro MMs that you have a much better chance of defeating an opponent. If they have no healers or minion summoners and you do, the battle is all but over. So they will use the ctrl key to find a high value target and charge through the enemy front line to attack the healers or necros. While this strategy is more effective than strategy A, it still has the problems of the warriors aggroing everything in the area and the healers are left precariously alone in the middle desperately trying to stay alive and heal at the same time. And you wonder why it is so hard to find a human monk to adventure with. Just this weekend a warrior did this and then had the gall to comment to my wife (who was playing a monk) “all you had to do was keep me healed.” Try playing a monk up at the mid levels and see how you like it. It is a thankless but crucial job. You can get the hench warriors to act like this if you have one of your ranged attackers declare a high value target (use ctrl-space). The henchmen are very good about massing firepower on your called target.
The bad guys travel in groups of one to as many as half a dozen. As you adventure in a region, if you pay attention, you will learn to distinguish the normal groupings –even when they intersect with other groups. Some groups are totally static and will not move unless attacked; some are area defenders and will roam around in a small area; finally there are patrols that roam over a broad area. It often pays to watch what the enemy is doing for a while before attacking, but be wary of patrols coming in on your sides or behind. Sometimes if you just wait a patrol will leave and you wont have to fight them at all. If the number of enemy looks daunting, there are probably multiple groups and if you watch a while you can figure out what they are. Then you can use strategy C to draw one group at a time.
C> DRAW THEM TO YOU: A much safer strategy when there are multiple groups in the area is to have one person move forward and bring a single red dot inside their aggro ring. This will trigger that enemy and his entire group to attack. You then move back and draw them toward the rest of your party. This method has the advantage of being able to pull groups apart so you can face one at a time and finish the enemy off a few bad guys at a time.
Up until recently I have been using a combination of strategy B and C. It is fine with the henchman healers I had been adventuring with. They will blindly charge up and keep you healed without complaint. When I started going with human monks, my attitude changed. One commented to me … “Thud, you are a pain to keep alive.” I quickly retorted “Alesia never complained.” I then did some research and testing for better methods to attack and found out something that all warriors need to get through their heads. WARRIORS ARE NOT THE PRIMARY DAMAGE DEALERS. All you warriors out there may be shocked to find that out, but it is true. Here are more advanced strategies that work well and can be combined with strategy C to greatly improve your survival rate in higher level adventuring areas. I got these from reading how the Underworld and Sorrows Furnace teams operate and testing in Grenth’s Footprint (outside Deldrimor Warcamp.)
D> DEFENSIVE WARRIOR: A ranger or elementalist will declare the target and all ranged personnel will concentrate on that one target until it goes down. The warrior has a different duty, he protects the ranged personnel. The warrior gets between the incoming fighters/trolls/mintaurs and attacks them before they get to the healers and nukers. If the bad guy runs by at attacks the healers anyway, you stick to them and finish them off. Note that this keeps you near the healers and give the healers a better change of not being a target. Once the fighters are gone, then you can go forward to finish off the hapless enemy elementalists and rangers that might be left. The big advantages of this method are you minimize the aggro possibilities and keep the healers safe. You just have to let go of the desire to be the primary killer and trust that your ranged team is going to pick good targets and concentrate firepower. It is impossible to do this with henchman warriors.
E> STANCE TANK: This technique works extremely well in areas with an aggro trigger like a torch or blasting barrel. Holding these items will guarantee that almost all the bad guys will attack YOU. The book for the bonus in Nolani Academy mission is the same. You will really want a BONDER monk with you to keep the stance tank alive. As the stance tank you take defensive stance skills like wary stance, balanced stance and Bonetti’s defense. You stay in those stances to minimize the damage the enemy will be pouring on you. The bonder will be striping hexes off you and keeping life bond on you to take some of your damage also. That leaves area attackers like barrage archers, elementalists and SS necros to damage the enemies clustered around you all at once. Your only job is to stay up and hold that item while they destroy your ill focused adversaries. I even talked to a couple guys who won PvP matches using this technique. The enemy team all logged off after failing to take down the tank after ten minutes of pounding him.